Martha Halemba, OFLA Professional Development ChairSpanish Teacher, Hudson High School

I hope you all had a great year! It sure has been a year of learning, trials, errors and mostly successes. The professional development committee has been able to offer several workshops to help you through these times of uncertainty. We are pleased to offer you a new opportunity to hone your 90% in the language skills. Beth Hanlon, our President Elect, presented a 7 hour workshop in Hudson High School on June 17.

We also have the CSCTFL Extension Workshop: Using Technology to Promote Proficiency presented by Bryan Drost. You have two locations. One took place in Columbus on June 27th and then a repeat performance will be on August 15th in Twinsburg. You can also sign up for those workshops at ofla.memberlodge.org.

We are once again offering a credit hour from Ashland University https://www.ashland.edu/founders/content/ofla-wksp-2015-16. You must have 15 hours of face-to-face workshops/sessions as well as write a reflection piece documenting the hours and your reaction to what you have learned. These include any OFLA sponsored workshops and the CSCTFL conference that will be held in Ohio this year. If you haven’t already asked permission, this is an excellent conference and is a must! There will be sessions from presenters from around your sixteen state region. For more information go to: http://www.csctfl.org/conferences/2016conference.html. Now is the time to get your administrators on board to get some excellent PD.

Keep your eye on the listserv for any new offerings in workshops. We would also like to publish some “hooks” for your first week. If you have something that really engages the students on days 1, 2, and 3, please send them to me or just share them on the listserv. We want students to connect the first day and be anxious to enter our classes every day! I will start publishing some ideas soon.